Posts

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article

Freedom And Business: How To Balance Both

/0 Comments/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article
Photo courtesy of Pexels

Everyone will have a different reason for why they go into business for themselves. For some, it has been a lifelong dream of making their own fortune, for others they just kind of fall into it. And for some people, it’s all about the freedom and flexibility that being your own boss brings. When you want to balance your life out equally with your work, running your own business is great. But, you can sometimes find that your business requires a lot of attention and dedication. So, how can you make sure that you’re able to balance your freedom out right?

Have A Strong Vision

Firstly, it’s important to have vision. Whether you have strong sustainability views, you want to make a difference in your customer’s lives, or you want to be able to have your own freedom in life, you have to keep that in mind. Business can suck you in and consume you, so it’s easy to lose sight of why you started out. But if you’re able to keep a strong vision, you should always be able to keep on track.

Set Strict Working Hours

When you run your own business, it is tempting to work flexible hours or whenever you feel like it. Whether you’re a freelance contractor or you have your own small office, it’s important that you set yourself office hours. Not only will it give off a level of professionalism to your customers and ensure that you’re more productive, but it will ensure that you’re able to keep your flexibility and leave your work at work too.

Blur Lines Finely

Next, you should feel comfortable by blurring the lines between your working world and home life. Some people say that you should keep them completely separate, but when you want flexibility, it’s often best to blur. Because your business can often boost your life. Take your work truck with BAK covers and head out of town with your family camping for a few days, just because you can. Take your other half on that corporate entertainment trip, just because you can. But just be sure that you blur the lines to benefit your life and enjoy your freedom, and not the other way around.

Always Be Productive

When it comes to balancing your freedom with work responsibilities, the best way to ensure that it always happens is to focus on your productivity. To do that, you may want to use something like a time tracking app to make sure you’re working to your full potential. It’s okay to be flexible and want to spend more time out of work than in, but you do need to make sure that you’re getting everything done in order to enjoy some freedom.

Know It’s Okay To Say No

And finally, you should also realize that it is okay to say no every once in awhile. If you started out on your own to enjoy more freedom and a flexible life, then you don’t have to feel obligated to tie yourself up with work commitments. You should have limits. That way, you can keep your freedom and enjoy the flexibility that comes with being a business owner.

StrategyDriven Practices for Professional Article

5 Tips on How to Better Your Time Management

/1 Comment/in /by

StrategyDriven Practices for Professional Article

In a world where it is getting difficult to spare even one moment for personal salvation, time is of the utmost essence. The world is progressing at a pace that is becoming more and more rapid daily. The days seem to be getting shorter and there are somehow not enough hours to deal with the huge bulk of tasks that await us. We all know how it feels like to wake up regretting the procrastination we thought wouldn’t have that big of an impact.

This is the reason time management is fast becoming a necessity instead of a choice.

If you want to be able to breathe without feeling suffocated, then you need to start working towards managing your time. It is the only way to make your day more productive without cracking under the pressure. Due to the rising need, time management has now become a process that must be treated like any other value-generating function. It has become a proper discipline and more people are working towards refining it.

Here are a few tips that will revolutionise your entire schedule and assist you in dealing with the daily stress without losing your sanity.

  1. Make use of resource planning software

This first tip is especially important for busy businesses. Resource planning software is a blessing when it comes to efficient time management. These tools assist you in planning out your day and completing your tasks on time. Any business is founded on the belief that time is money for everyone and that making the most out of it is everyone’s aspiration.

These systems are designed to save your valuable time and improve project delivery. This will help you delegate projects to the right people, improve the quality and speed of work, and take productivity to a new level.

If you’re looking to make use of resource planning software, an example I found that’s worth looking into is timewax (https://www.timewax.co.uk/) which is a highly proficient and reliable resource planning application for businesses of all sizes and nature. It is a multi-platform solution that travels with you wherever you go, on your desktop or your mobile devices, offering the freedom to work without wasting time.  If you are looking to give your profits a significant turnover, then Timewax is your go to time management assistant.

  1. Prioritise Intelligently

One of the secrets behind the lives of those who seem to have it all together is that they have learned the art of prioritising. Instead of allowing the daily workload and endless chores bring you down, make a list of all your tasks and then break them down into several categories for your own ease. Prioritising will help you plan your time in a better and more productive manner than if you haphazardly attempt to check items off your to-do list.

Here are four priority categories you can jot down and fill in according to the urgency of the tasks at hand:

  • Important and critical– Tasks that are high priority and must be done no matter what. These are the tasks you should start with.
  • Important, but not critical– These jobs are ones that seem to be important at first glance, but after a closer look do not make it to the list of tasks to be completed urgently. Note down a slot for each of these responsibilities and complete them according to your decided schedule.
  • Critical, but not important: These chores are a nuisance as they are not of any real value, but gain importance because of the ‘noise’ they make. Make efforts to delegate such tasks to someone else and if not possible, attempt to give them average precedence.
  • Not important and not critical: These are the responsibilities you can do without as they only clutter your day and make you busier than you actually are. It is best to delegate these tasks so that the time saved can be utilised for priority tasks.
  1. Learn to Plan Ahead

One of the worst blunders you can make to ruin your entire day is to jump in without having a clear picture of what you are expected to accomplish. The time you spend planning the events of your day is trivial compared to the time you will waste jumping from one task to another, desolately trying to accomplish everything. There are two time-frames for you to plan out your schedule, depending on whether you are a night person or a day enthusiast:

  • The night before: Take fifteen minutes out before you start your bedtime routine to note down the tasks that are waiting for you when you wake up. Getting up the next day with everything already planned out will give you a sense of calm and kick-start your day on a good note.
  • First thing in the morning: After getting ready to face the day, sit down and plan your day before leaving for your first assignment.
  1. Set deadlines

Even when our days are filled with an endless list of tasks, we still somehow manage to waste time procrastinating or doing things that we can definitely do without. Setting specific deadlines for every task you need to finish will help you keep your schedule and avoid losing precious time.

Try to set a deadline that is a few hours earlier so that you can take care of any tasks that emerge suddenly. It is helpful to challenge yourself and setting a reward for yourself for completion of the chore will do wonders for you.

Keep your eyes on the clock and do not let anything divert your focus and attention. Set rewards for completing your task on time.

  1. Utilise Your Downtime Efficiently

This certainly does not mean that you spend all of your downtime planning and prioritising further, as it will just elevate your stress levels and make you incompetent. If you find yourself stuck in morning traffic or sitting in the waiting room before a meeting, then finalising your dinner plans or putting together a grocery list will help manage your time efficiently. However, make sure you spend some of this extra time relaxing and catching your breath as overworking your mind will lead to premature fatigue before the day is even half over.

Time management is a skill that everyone needs to master. Be it a student attending music lessons after school or a business person running from one meeting to another. Stressing out about having too much to do in an inadequate amount of time will only result in you almost getting a brain haemorrhage!

Make use of these tips, get help where you can, invest in the right technology and watch your life take a turn for the better. You will be able to spend some quality time with your loved ones without having to feel guilty about sacrificing the time you could have spent on completing your tasks.

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article

6 Quick Tricks to Free Up More Time in Your Small Business

/0 Comments/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleSuccess in business is always favoured, but there is one unfortunate by-product that comes with it, you tend to be much busier than before. Suddenly, there’s much more work, more meetings, more projects, more deadlines and more decisions to be made. All of this takes a toll on your personal life as you suddenly have a lot on your to-do list, preventing you from taking time out on other important things.

Thankfully, there are some ways you can free up more time in your business without impacting its success. Here are 6 quick trips to help you do just that.

1.     Automate As Many of Your Tasks as Possible

Most of the tasks that take up your time can probably be automated. Are you supposed to send out regular reports at the end of each month? Automate them. Do you have bills that need to be paid on a certain date? Automate them! These tasks may not seem very time consuming, but they all mount up and distract you from bigger projects. Automating things will free up valuable time that can be better spent elsewhere.

2.     Keep Track of Your Time

To better understand what activities are taking up most of your time, write down everything you do each day and the time you spend on each activity. Include everything such as breaks, social media, emails and calls. This way you will be able to figure out where are you wasting most of your time and can make decisions accordingly. Once you get a rough sketch of the time you spend on each activity, you can make a timetable and dedicate your time to all the important tasks by cutting out the time wasters.

3.     Prioritise by Urgency and Set Deadlines

It’s important to prioritise urgent projects and start working on them first, rather than worrying about the projects that are due next week. This will help you to keep your calm and avoid being haphazard. Also, you should set deadlines for each task and do your best to meet them each time. Deadlines motivate you to complete a project, preventing you from doing nothing when you should be doing work.

4.     Use Invoice Software

Invoicing is one of the most tedious tasks for any small business. It also takes a lot of your time that could have been better spent. Did you know that there’s invoice software out there that can actually take control of the entire process of invoicing from the beginning till the end? You can install online invoice software that not only manages things for you, but that also helps you to create better invoice designs that will increase customer satisfaction.

5.     Learn to Delegate Tasks

Although you may want to believe it, you’re not superhuman. You CANNOT do everything on your own. The idea is to find trustworthy people and delegate tasks to them. Not only will this help in freeing up time in your small business, but will also help you to complete projects within your set deadlines. Focus your energy on the more important tasks you have at hand and leave the rest to your team.

6.     Avoid Distractions

Checking on social media and looking at personal emails aren’t the only distractions we often fall victim to when trying to work. If you work in a busy office full of interruptions, try working from home a few days where you can get some peace and quiet. Avoid making any unnecessary phone calls and only take them if you know it’s urgent. Distractions take us away from the task at hand and can accumulate into hours of lost time.

With these quick and simple tricks, you’ll be able to free up a lot of time in your small business without affecting the profitability at all. It’s important to take time out for personal commitments so you can keep a balance between your work and personal life. If you follow the above advice, you should have some extra time to do just that!

The 86400 Concept: Manage Purpose, Not Time

/2 Comments/in /by

As a former time-management trainer, I have intimate knowledge of the folly of depending on lists, planners and other such tools. Ive tried many different kinds but found that something was missing in my strategy. It’s not that those tools are bad – far from it – but over time, I learned that they miss the mark. Organizers, calendars, and the latest apps all focus on managing time a finite entity. Hence, time management is a futile exercise in juggling a limited resource the 86,400 seconds we have in each day.

It is common for leaders in businesses, schools, churches and even households to get so busy mastering their schedules for efficiency that they greatly diminish the efficacy of their end product their purpose. This is the trap door of time management.

[wcm_restrict]To maximize your day, you must manage that which is limitless, dynamic and filled will infinite possibilities your purpose. Managing your purpose involves exercising control over your actions to carry out a plan that will achieve an anticipated outcome. Purpose management is a continuing cycle that engages you in activities that are relevant to fulfilling your purpose. Managing purpose is a challenge to use those precious 86,400 seconds you have each day in a way that allows you to live your passion, achieve your goals and become all that you were created to be. Many of us would love to do that but don’t know where to start.

Here are six tips that will put purpose management to work for you.

Manage Your Purpose Past

Tip One: Learn to forgive yourself and others. This is not advice that business executives are used to hearing, but it should be. Regrets from yesterdays business dealings or yesteryears trials can stifle progress if we do not forgive others and ourselves liberally and often.

Tip Two: Seek wisdom. It goes beyond accumulated learning. Wisdom is using information and experiences from the past to know what to do, why you should do it, and most importantly, how to act on what you know. Wisdom, thus, is an action word that makes your purposeful intentions tangible.

Manage Your Purpose Present

Tip Three: Regularly, let your imagination roam free. Imagination is the doorway to purpose. Injecting imagination into your business decisions, goals and processes can allow you to see hidden opportunities and dangers.

Tip Four: Be thankful. As a businessperson, you may fear that this means you should be complacent and willing to accept the status quo. Not at all. Thankfulness is an empowering aptitude. Focus on being grateful for what you possess and what you have accomplished already. This protects you from blinding negativity and hones your senses to be more aware of opportunities. Thankfulness is a state of being that invites even more success.

Manage Your Purpose Future

Tip Five: Generously share your insights, experiences and business acumen. Executives are schooled to give of themselves to a point. However, generosity in our actions offers us the opportunity to empower others.

Tip Six: Courageously confront threats to your company’s solvency. Executives are no strangers to courage. Yet so many cower in fear of the unexpected, of innovations, and of potentialities. Facing these with the courage to risk, re-evaluate and reconfigure allows your purpose to take root in all you do.

The question you should ask each morning is not, How many tasks can I squeeze into my allotted time, but rather, How closely can I use each second of this day to live my purpose? If you use these tips, your purpose, which is limitless, will guide the process, not the distractions that limit your potential.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:

[reveal_quick_checkout id=”25489″ checkout_text=”Subscribing to the Self Guided Program – It’s Free!”]
 
[/wcm_nonmember]

About the Author

Lavaille Lavette has worked as a schoolteacher, school district administrator, speechwriter, international business development specialist, and radio host. She is co-founder of Every Child an Author, an organization on a mission to make every child in America a published author, one grade level at a time. As part of Lavaille’s 86400 Movement, Making a Difference, Being the Difference, she formed the 86400 Book Club for the homeless in partnership with The Bread of Life Ministry. The 86400 Book Clubs goal is to encourage men and women to read for enjoyment, enlightenment, and self-improvement.

Lavaille has served on the board of directors of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, Foxshire Foundation, the Just Help Foundation, and Aspiring Youth Foundation. Beyond her work in community engagement, nonprofit, and education spheres, she is also the creator and author of the childrens book series The Adventures of Roopster Roux. Lavaille’s previous book is with Grammy Award-winning singer Yolanda Adams, entitled Points of Power: Discover a Spirit-Filled Life of Joy and Purpose.

StrategyDriven Resource Management Warning Flag Article

Resource Management Warning Flag 2 – Parkinson’s Law

/0 Comments/in , /by

StrategyDriven Resource Management Warning Flag“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

Parkinson’s Law
Wikipedia

There exists a tendency among workers to use all of the time allotted to perform a task even if the work can be done in a shorter period of time. Some organizations, through high accountability and managerial engagement, minimize the amount of lost time caused by unnecessary work expansion. In other organizations, however, a lack of managerial oversight and reinforcement of high performance standards allows the Thieves of Time to rob the organization of precious productivity.[wcm_restrict plans=”40855, 25542, 25653″]

Parkinson’s Law suggests that workers will fill the time allotted to perform work whether that time is needed or not. The three Thieves of Time comprising Parkinson’s Law include: the student syndrome, multitasking, and unassimilated advances. These Thieves of Time can be described as:

  • The Student Syndrome: Tendency to delay the start of an activity until the perceived point at which any further delay would result in the activity being overdue. Problems arising during the performance of the activity typically result in a late completion. (Don’t forget Murphy’s Law – “Anything that can go wrong, will!”)
  • Multitasking: Performance of several activities simultaneously. Time to start and restart an activity accumulates; lengthening the time to perform each activity as compared to that needed to perform the task in a start-to-finish manner.
  • Unassimilated Advances: Accumulation of delays but not advances as work passes through a series of individual contributors. Here, a lack of communication regarding early work completion and/or a lack of preparation to begin work before its scheduled start time results in a failure to capture advances.

If left unchecked, the Thieves of Time will undermine an organization’s productivity and diminish its overall value. While not all inclusive, the four lists below, Process-Based Warning Flags, Process Execution Warning Flags – Behaviors, Potential, Observable Results, and Potential Causes, are designed to help leaders to recognize whether the Thieves of Time are at work within their organizations. Only after a problem is recognized and its causes identified can the needed action be taken to move the organization toward improved performance.

Process-Based Warning Flags

  • no time reporting process
  • no process to collect time to perform data associated with specific project tasks or work orders
  • lack of a rigorous project scope control and/or project change management process

Process Execution Warning Flags – Behaviors

  • individuals do not report time to perform specific work activities even if required to do so by procedure
  • individuals consistently report time worked as 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week even if they worked more or less than this amount
  • individuals record time worked from memory once every several days or more
  • lack of executive and managerial challenge to time reports
  • lack of executive and managerial challenge to time requirement estimates
  • lack of supervisory oversight and observation of work

Potential, Observable Results

  • excessive water cooler time, frequent long lunches, late arrivals, and/or early departures all with on schedule, on budget work completion at the desired quality level
  • excessive time spent on personal emails and/or personal phone calls with on schedule, on budget work completion at the desired quality level
  • excessive, perfectionist standards applied to all work with on schedule, on budget work completion
  • products having additional out-of-scope features while being completed on time and on budget
  • benchmarking consistently reveals higher competitor capacity and/or lower costs

Potential Causes

  • executives and managers are uncomfortable with conflict and avoid challenging employees regarding their work practices
  • executives and managers are not engaged with the workforce and their work practices
  • executives and managers routinely assess a person’s value contribution based on how busy they appear, thereby, encouraging ‘busy work’
  • individual contributor complacency

Final Thought…

Establishing and reinforcing high performance standards is critical to creating a culture of accountability. The existence of Parkinson’s Law within an organization suggests that the organization may suffer from diminished accountability. Thus, there may be several other opportunities to realize performance improvement by increasing the organization’s level of accountability. Insights to becoming a more accountable organization can be found in the members’ only category: Organizational Accountability.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”40855, 25542, 25653″]

Hi there! Gain access to this article with a StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription or buy access to the article itself.

Subscribe to the StrategyDriven Insights Library

Sign-up now for your StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription for as low as $15 / month (paid annually).

Subscribe Now!

Not sure? Click here to learn more.

 Buy the Article

Don’t need a subscription? Buy access to Resource Management Warning Flag 2 – Parkinson’s Law for just $2!

Access the Article Now!

[/wcm_nonmember]
 
Additional Information

The following StrategyDriven recommended best practices are designed to promote high, performance-based activity time estimates:

Additional Resources

StrategyDriven Contributors recommend the following resource as a guide to the common methods used to estimate resource needs for an activity or project:

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition
by the Project Management Institute

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.